David Little: Opinions make some uneasy

After decades of sharing my opinions on the editorial page, I can speak authoritatively about one thing I've learned over the years.

If you write an opinion that people agree with, you are wise, knowledgeable, well-researched and unafraid to tell it like it is. And if you write an opinion that people disagree with, you are inaccurate, uninformed, ill-tempered, mean-spirited and need to learn to keep your opinions to yourself.

I've known that for years. And the rest of you — those who are paying attention — have seen it this month as readers have held a dialogue about a couple of opinion page columnists, Thomas Sowell and Cynthia Tucker.

It started with a letter to the editor a month ago. The letter writer opined that Sowell was "bitter," "alienated" and "venomous" and that we should stop running his column.

That brought responses both in support of and opposed to that opinion. There were letters. There were phone calls to "Tell It to the E-R." And there were phone calls to me, even though I was a disinterested (but amused) party to this argument.

One phone message went something like this: "I'm not sure if you're thinking about canceling Thomas Sowell, but I hope you don't. He really tells it like it is. I agree with him all the time. He's just so smart. On the other hand, that Cynthia Tucker is so misinformed and full of hate. I really hope you cancel her columns. She's just always wrong about things."

See, Sowell is very conservative. If you're conservative, you probably think he's brilliant and tells it like it is. Tucker is very liberal. If you're liberal, you probably think she's brilliant and tells it like it is.

People taking part in the argument over whether Sowell or Tucker should be banished love to say, "I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment, but ..." They usually stop there, because they soon realize the absurdity of the unspoken second part of that sentence: "... but I wish you'd only print opinions that I agree with."

Too many people dislike hearing opinions that differ from their own. That's why Fox News is so popular with conservatives, and MSNBC is so popular with liberals. God forbid they'd want to hear the other side of the argument.

We have liberal columnists and conservative columnists. We have liberal letter writers and conservative ones. If opinions — even those that differ from your own — make you uncomfortable, you probably should skip the opinion page. Being exposed to the other side of the argument ... it's not worth the risk.

Newspapers serve as a soapbox and let all readers share their opinions. I hope newspapers never change in that regard. I don't want the United States to be like other countries, where each political party has its own newspaper — one for the conservatives, one for the liberals, one for the socialists, and so on. If you pick up the party's newspaper, you know exactly what you're getting.

I'd rather have a newspaper with an opinion page that occasionally challenges your thinking, whatever it is.

And before you counter with the argument that the E-R leans one way or the other on the opinion page — in letters and columns anyway, not our editorials on the left side of the page — I'd remind you that bias is in the eye of the beholder. Conservatives think we're a liberal rag. Liberals think we're horribly conservative.

Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between.

David Little is editor of the Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register. His column appears each Sunday. He can be reached at dlittle@chicoer.com. Follow him on Twitter, @ER_DavidLittle.